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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28270272">A Matter of Address</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilthit/pseuds/Ilthit'>Ilthit</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Jonathan Strange &amp; Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Snow, Winter, first name basis, unwillingly in lust</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:26:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,691</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28270272</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilthit/pseuds/Ilthit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>You can choose your friends but you can't choose your soulmate.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>John Childermass/Henry Lascelles</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>JSAMN New Year's fanfiction exchange</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Matter of Address</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/touchmytardis/gifts">touchmytardis</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>Family name (noun): Also, COMMON NAME. The name by which the members of a single family are known, prefixed by an honorific and inherited in the father’s line.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>First name (noun): Also, SECRET NAME. A personal name that is typically known only to oneself, one’s parents, and one’s soulmate.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Soulmate (noun): A person such as one wishes to spend one’s life with; a mirror image of one’s own mind and heart, identified by an instinctive, sudden recognition which reveals in one’s mind one’s soulmate’s secret first name. Typically one’s wife.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Strange was away at war, and the circle around Mr Norrell thus once again a collection of disjointed personalities, each with only a tenuous claim on the attention of that great gentleman. In some ways, to some of them at least, that was preferable to coming so very distant a second, or third, or fourth, to Jonathan Strange. That was how it appeared to Mr Lascelles as he rifled through submissions to the Friends of English Magic from various reputable, or at least interesting, authors, in his accustomed spot in the library in the house at Hanover-square.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It had been snowing in fits, mostly small stinging flakes, but it had accumulated in the streets and rooftops until it had driven all of London inside. One barely wished to leave the fireside of Mr Norrell’s library merely to continue to work with more privacy at home. It was getting late, however, and Mr Norrell had already yawned three times. Damn the man, he was making Lascelles sleepy, too. He blinked at the page, trying to make out the narrow script in candlelight, and forgetting what he had read almost as soon as he had passed his eyes over it. When a hand touched his shoulder, he jumped, nearly spilling his ink. “It’s late, sir,” said Childermass, stating the obvious. “Shouldn’t you—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do not presume to tell me what to do, John,” he said drily. Childermass froze. It was only then that Lascelles realized what he had said, and it was as if all the ice and snow banking up on the windowsill had been suddenly thrust down the back of his waistcoat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Childermass opened his mouth. “Hen—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Desist. Do not say another word.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is Henry, isn’t it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mr Lascelles stood up with a clatter of his chair and leaned closer to Childermass. Mr Norrell looked up blearily, blinked and yawned again, and went back to his book. “Never say that aloud again,” Lascelles whispered to Childermass, the words rough with barely controlled anger. “Do you hear me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s a little late now, isn’t it, sir?” Childermass’s mouth curved in something like a smile, his dark eyes mocking. It made Lascelles’s lip twitch with revulsion. This, this lowly, dark, obstinate creature was the person that fate had marked out as his mate? It was beyond embarrassing. It was unacceptable. He had thought so from the moment he had first heard Childermass’s secret name float across his consciousness. It was infamy enough to be linked to another of his own sex in this manner, but this one? This person? No, fate must be wrong.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But fate is never wrong. And in the depth of his weary, strangled, black little heart he recognized this man as a mirror of his own soul, with all that entailed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Childermass reached out a hand slowly, as if approaching a nervous horse. Lascelles instinctively pulled his arm back. Those eyes bore into him, and then the hand turned, palm up. “Let us be sensible about this.” Childermass’s voice was low and intimate; here in the shadows by the shelves of books whispering to themselves, with the firelight bringing life to the carvings in the wood, it seemed to Lascelles as if they were in a little corner of the world by themselves, invisible and unheard. “Now that we both know for sure. I have a room to myself up above in the attic. I will make sure we are not disturbed. We can rid ourselves of the damn distraction.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I should have expected a person of your status to make such a suggestion,” Lascelles shot out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Childermass raised his brows slowly. He stretched out his fingers, brushing against the back of Lascelles’s hand. All he had to do was take it. “Come now, sir. I know what you must be feeling. I feel it myself. Five years. Five bloody years, Henry.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lascelles remembered still the moment he had first laid eyes on John Childermass. It had not been the first time they had been in the same room, as Lascelles was not in the habit of paying attention to other people’s servants. It was only on the third or fourth time when, irritated that Norrell kept talking to his man when there was also Lascelles to be conversed with, that he had looked up from his newspaper and evaluated his person. His first thought had been that Mr Norrell’s secretary was far too country-ish for the fashionable interior Mr Drawlight had created for his London house; on second look, he had thought Childermass looked like a rogue, more a man of highways than of letters with that ragged hair of his; on his third look, he had seen the bold tilt of his chin, a necktie that begged for his hands to correct it, an attractive mouth; and then those eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He snatched his hand back. “Those years should be proof enough that neither of us feels any urgency too great to resist.” But even as he spoke the words, he was conscious of the fact that that urgency had intensified the moment his name fell out of John Childermass’s mouth. Some, he had heard told, felt no erotic stirrings for their fated mate; usually, he imagined, they were those persons who felt few such stirrings under any circumstances at all. He did not count himself in their lucky number. Perhaps if he had been a little less libertine in his exploits, he might have felt more natural revulsion than, in fact, he did; but there were few things of that nature that he could imagine that he had not already tried.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And the truth of it was he very much would like to follow Childermass up to whatever flea-infested hole he inhabited and realize at least some portion of what he had imagined doing with, and to, that twisting, leaning, long-legged body he had pictured in his mind in some detail. The one thing that gave him the strength to resist was the thought that Childermass must be suffering as he did. “But you are quite right,” he said with a certain satisfaction, “it is getting late, and I believe I will be heading home.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The shadows receded as he moved towards the fire to say his good-nights to Mr Norrell, and chat a moment longer about the work before heading out the door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lascelles’s house was dark and cold, but his man brought down a candle and some coal from the kitchen for his bed, and he was soon safely ensconced and warming up under his covers, imagining what might have been that night were his character any weaker. The night grew long and his sheet ever more tangled, sweaty even in the trickle of freezing air through the window panes of his bedroom. It was past four o’clock in the morning when he finally drifted off into restless dreams of wolves and horses.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The following afternoon found Lascelles rethinking his position. He took his breakfast in his study whenever he had no reason to expect visitors, which allowed him to work while drinking his coffee if he so pleased. As he sipped the pitch-black liquid, he found his thoughts clearer than they had been with the distraction of Childermass right in front of him. The ruffian was probably quite right. They could let nature take its course and thus weaken whatever power this ridiculous bond had over them. They were men of reason, or at the very least Lascelles was, and could separate their politics, ambitions and lives from…</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>From a soul-bond?</span>
  </em>
  <span> said a rebelliously truthful voice at the back of his head. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Not possible.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>But it had to be. Lascelles simply refused to consider any other option. And in any case, he had asserted his authority the previous night by walking away. Childermass should know Lascelles would never be at his beck and call like a beast in heat. So… so now he could… acquiesce, without loss of face, at least so long as Childermass, too, understood that all this had to be accomplished under the strictest confidence. This realization pleased him, and he congratulated himself of it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lascelles’s coffee grew cold as he stared out the window of his study at the white city outside, imagining the details of that acquiescence. Then he wrenched himself out of such thoughts with a shake of his head and opened his notes for a little more work before he’d call his man to deliver a note to Hanover-square.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That afternoon, the boy returned with a reply from Childermass to his invitation to Bruton-street. Lascelles unfolded the paper to read a single word:</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>No</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A dozen responses sprung up in his mind, each jostling for attention, each quite unacceptably emotional. He quieted every one of them and threw Childermass’s note in the fire.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A week passed. It was a perfectly normal week of occasional visits on Hanover-square, others to the publisher, to society dinners and the House of Commons. Indeed, outwardly nothing at all had changed in Mr Lascelles’s life, other than perhaps that he seemed a touch distracted and irritable. He had met Childermass during this time, of course, exchanging the odd dark glance across the room, but the two had not spoken any further. Lascelles was discovering that Childermass could be as stubborn as a mule. Their powers of resolution, he was beginning to fear, were matched.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Surely it could not be another week? A month? A </span>
  <em>
    <span>year</span>
  </em>
  <span>? How far could his pride alone carry him? What a damned nuisance the whole business was proving! It spoiled his pleasure in any other thing. What was worse, he was beginning to fear Childermass might not be suffering at all, for he showed no ill effects to the efficacy of his work. Meanwhile Lascelles had found himself unable to produce more than a paragraph or two, and had had to hound others to do his work for him. Something simply had to break.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You are not leaving town for Christmas, Mr Lascelles?” asked Mr Norrell, when conversation in the library one mid-day hour touched on a play being put up in Bath for the beginning of Christmastide. “You cannot. I have need of you.” After being reassured this was not the case, Norrell nodded his head several times and ruffled his papers. “Good, good. Your absence on top of Childermass’s would be quite intolerable. And— Yes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span> “Childermass? Absence? Where on earth would Childermass be going?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Norrell’s face pinched into a point and he rubbed his hand over his nose, dislodging his glasses. “It isn’t important. A personal matter, in the country.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With Norrell, that meant either a book of magic was to be sold or a prospective magician to be silenced. But this was winter, when travel was slow and treacherous, and any journey outside of the very closest towns to London would take a week at least, more likely two or three. Mr Lascelles’s palms grew damp. He glanced around the library, but he already knew Childermass was not there. His body was intimately attuned to the man’s presence these days. “When?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, he left this morning,” said Norrell.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took a not inconsiderable amount of charm and subterfuge to glean from Mr Norrell the information of exactly where Childermass was heading. It took the rest of the afternoon to prepare Lascelles’s horse and his vital luggage, as well as the same for his man. Maps were consulted, lanterns affixed to saddles and the likely route ascertained with the help of a local carter, of all people, who knew all the open routes between London and the west country at this time of year. Lascelles gave no excuses for his abrupt departure; neither did he condescend to explain himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The wind was harsh, the road blocked with banks of snow, and every tree seemed determined to dunk its heavy loads upon them with a snap and rustle of dark branches. Still Mr Lascelles drove his horse and his servant until all of four of them, men and beasts, shivered with exhaustion as well as the cold. They stopped in Chiswick and Osterley to inquire at the inns; in Cranford, Mr Lascelles received the answer he had been hoping for. He turned back to bark an order to his man, who looked relieved indeed to finally wipe the snow from his eyebrows and hand the reins of their mounts to the stable-man.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was the small hours of the night, past even Lascelles’s usual bedtime. The barman, who had been called up out of his rest and had his heavy overcoat hastily thrown over his shirt, was shifting from alarm to puzzlement, the light of his candle flickering in a draft. “Shall I wake up a couple more fellows, then, sir, and have him chained up in the stables overnight for you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?” Lascelles laughed. It was rather tempting to bid them do so, after all Childermass had put him through. “Don’t be absurd. Simply show me to his room.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is he not a wanted criminal, then?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is entirely a personal matter.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If this cost Lascelles the esteem of a country barman, he himself remained unaware of it, and would not have cared very much either way. He was led up two flights of stairs to a door at the back of the hall. It was no better or worse than any coaching inn, which was to say it was cold, drafty and worn, if not particularly dirty, and one could expect lice if not rats. Lascelles was beyond such petty concerns. He knocked twice, tried the door, found it bolted, and knocked again, with increasing insistence.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He knew he had not been misled before he even heard the drag of feet across the floor and the bolt drawn back, and met Childermass’s laughing eyes without surprise. “Well, Mr Lascelles, this is most unusual.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was irritating, this sense of utter relief that hit his chest at the sight. He was at last where all his senses told him he ought to be, or very nearly. He pushed himself into the small, dark room. His candle painted a heavily curtained window, a small writing-table with a rickety chair, a narrow bed and a saddle-bag half-pushed underneath it, and apart from these the room contained only the two of them. “Leaving London! Leaving London!” Lascelles repeated. “Leaving </span>
  <em>
    <span>me</span>
  </em>
  <span>!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It isn’t the first time I have left London in the past few years, sir,” said Childermass, backing up as Lascelles advanced—yet there was nothing cowardly about the motion, rather it was a confident backwards saunter towards the bed. “And since, as you say, there was no particular urgency—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, do be quiet,” said Lascelles crossly, put his candle down on the table, took one more long stride forward, caught Childermass by the waist, and kissed his mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Childermass angled his face to catch his lips, one calloused hand coming up to Lascelles’s numb-chilled cheek to steady him. A bone-deep shiver went through Lascelles’s body, and despite his weariness and discomfort it electrified him like a shot of whiskey or, indeed, one of those novelty devices Bath innovators swore cured ills. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Finally</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he thought. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Finally</span>
  </em>
  <span>, his whole body sighed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>John laughed against his lips, and pulled back to brush Henry’s hat off his head. It was moist, with snow still clinging in clumps to its rim. “I’m afraid, Mr Lascelles, that you’ve made yourself look rather ridiculous.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I thought I told you to be quiet,” Lascelles snapped, but he did not let go, his gloved fingers digging possessively into Childermass’s sides. “And you know my name is Henry.”</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Note: Read the comments at your own risk, they do not stay T-rated.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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